Old Bear said nothing, but sat unmoving on his pony’s back, his heart pounding.

“The buffalo are dead,” said Old Bear. He whispered this.

“The buffalo are coming back,” said Kicking Bear, suddenly laughing and raising his shield and lance with a joyous upward movement of his arms. He repeated, even shouted happily, “The buffalo-are coming back!”

“They are dead,” said Old Bear, his hands clutched suddenly in the mane of his pony.

Kicking Bear reached forth gently and touched the old man’s arm, then grasped it. Old Bear could feel the strong grip on his frail arm, feel the tightness and the stirring tremble of those locked brown fingers on his old arm. “The buffalo are coming back,” said Kicking Bear.

Then Kicking Bear released the old man’s arm and laughed again, as a young warrior used to laugh, as if going to claim his bride or in showing scalps to his father, and saying nothing more, Kicking Bear turned the nose rope of his pony and rode away from Old Bear, beginning to sing a medicine song.

For a long time after Kicking Bear rode away, Old Bear sat still on his pony. He still felt the fingers of the young man tight on his arm, and still heard his words. Were the buffalo coming back? What did the young man mean? One should not lie-and most of all not lie about such things, not about the dead, or the buffalo.

Not far from the hoofs of his pony, lying in the sage by the river, Old Bear saw the white shards of a buffalo skull, broken, lying near a patch of cactus.

The buffalo were dead.

But the young man had said they were coming back.

And one should not lie of such matters.

On the back of his pony Old Bear, in spite of the fiery sun overhead, shivered, trembled, and the pony, startled, shifted his footing.

Old Bear’s eyes stung with tears.

Had it been a vision?